Optimism
greeted the opening of the 1932-33 movie season. "According to Variety,
barometer of the show business, the general feeling is that the theaters
'after struggling with the worst summer they've ever known,' are beginning
to recover," wrote Harold Heffernan in "The Sound of the Screen"
column in The Detroit News (August 15).

After
Horse Feathers
opened in Ann Arbor at the Michigan on August 28, a review in The Ann
Arbor Daily News the next day read, "It certainly is good for
an evening of hearty laughs, this picture the Michigan offers this week.
Of course, that's to be expected of any vehicle in which the Marx brothers
are cast, and in this one-'Horse Feathers'-they certainly maintain the
pace which they set in 'The Cocoanuts' and 'Animal Crackers.' "

In
Detroit, RKO's "Greater Show Season" started on August 11 at
the RKO Downtown, with Walter Huston in Frank Capra's American
Madness. The next day, the laughter rolled through the Michigan
in Detroit with the opening of Horse
Feathers, starring the Marx Brothers. Later at the RKO Downtown, Dolores
del Rio and Joel McCrea starred in King Vidor's Bird
of Paradise.

After
Horse Feathers
opened in Detroit at the Michigan, movie reviewers made the following
comments:

"The
height of futility, according to our way of thinking, is to attempt to
describe in detail the antics of the Marx Brothers," wrote Len G.
Shaw in The Detroit Free Press on August 13. "Singly or collectively,
they are the zaniest of the zaneys, so it will be well when you visit
the Michigan during their stay to park reason outside and prepare to give
yourself over wholeheartedly to the nonsense they dispense in 'Horse Feathers.'
"

"All
day Friday the Michigan Theater teemed with some of that long-lost activity
of 1929," wrote Harold Heffernan in The Detroit News on August
13. "The house was crowded at every performance, standees were chafing
several hundred deep in the lobby and that familiar cry, "standing
room only" came from the sidewalk barker."

Horse
Feathers had earlier opened in New York
City on August 10 at the Rialto. The Detroit neighborhood run of Horse
Feathers began on September 16 at the Paramount
and Riviera. Horse
Feathers played at the Redford on October
16-18.Click here
to see a PDF of newspaper images relating to the opening of Horse
Feathers.

The
Redford remained dark during August following its temporary closing on
July 8 (it would re-open October 7). But
other Publix neighborhood theaters stayed open, including the Annex, which
on August 28 showed Unashamed
(Helen Twelvetrees), along with "Act-News-Novelty-Song".

Also
temporarily closed in Detroit were the downtown Madison, Paramount, State,
and United Artists theaters. On August 9, Harold Heffernan of The Detroit
News reported that the Paramount and United Artists theaters were
being reconditioned and would re-open around September 1, when "Two
outstanding long run pictures will start these houses on fresh careers."